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Harperdog writes "Hugh Gusterson has a great article on the troubles at Los Alamos over the last decade. Since the late 1990s, nuclear weapons scientists at the US Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory have faced an unanticipated threat to their work, from politicians and administrators whose reforms and management policies—enacted in the name of national security and efficiency—have substantially undermined the lab's ability to function as an institution and to superintend the nuclear stockpile."

"Hoping Nanos would take the hint, employees planted âoefor saleâ signs on his lawn in the middle of the night. He once came out of church to find an obscene bumper sticker had been affixed to his car while he was praying. Things eventually got so bad that Nanos had a safe room installed in his home. In May 2005, faced with an unmanageable situation, Nanos abruptly resigned. âoeThe corks they are a-poppinâ(TM) tonight,â reacted one poster on the blog."

The guy may not have been a pleasure to work with, but if this is not a sign of sloppiness and arrogance (and severe lack of human compassion and discipline), then I don't know what is.

Being "a pleasure to work with" isn't a requisite for being a good administrator, it's true, but taking such an adversarial attitude to personnel that a mass staff revolt is launched is a sign that one is clearly not appropriate for the job.

If one employee acts like a child and hates a manager, even two or three.... sure.

However, most people don't just act like that. I have known and seen places erun by good but tough managers, they are respected as good, even if tough. They don't inspire this sort of response in most people.

A couple of bad apples is on the bad apples. Larger numbers? Thats the manager. Just because you are a hardass doesn't mean you are good at it.

So you're comparing being mocked with being raped, and wearing a short skirt with taking a hostile and adversarial attitude with everyone who works for you. That's some impressive level of equivalency you have there. He wasn't hurt or physically assaulted no one from his family was hurt or physically assaulted. They were kinda mean to him, like he was very mean to them.

That's not to say that the way the staff had been acting was acceptable. There were clearly compliance issues at the lab. Acting like a

...these labs don't exist for the pleasure of working there. And nerds clearly still don't have a clue of how they are perceived by the rest of society.

In a real sense they do exist for the pleasure of working there; because the primary societal goals for which the labs were created can only be accomplished by people who are motivated by the pleasure of their work. The motivations of people like Oppenheimer, Feynman, Hasslacher, et al. are not generally money, they are motivated to understand nature, to work with similarly talented people, and to be recognized within that peer group for their work. Acknowledgment outside the peer group is largely unimportant, which means even if they spent the time to consider how they are perceived by the rest of society, they would not especially care. These are not easy people to manage towards goals other than their own, and it takes someone like Oppenheimer who was both in the peer group and an excellent manager to do so. It may also take an existential situation like was faced in WWII.

And nerds clearly still don't have a clue of how they are perceived by the rest of society.

Dangerous and childish behavior aside, nerds have a clue about that. They call it anti-intellectualism, and rightly regard it as a problem with society at large rather than a problem with the target(s).

...the idea of disappearing into a cloud of vapour at any time doesn't scare me anymore. I grew up with dive-under-the-desk drills, "Protect And Survive" [atomica.co.uk], "Threads" [imdb.com] (which terrified me the first time I watched it) and "When The Wind Blows" [imdb.com] (which made me cry). I'm so used to Government using scare tactics to get its own way I'm slap happy to them.

What does frighten me is the fact that people are still scared of what TPTB to put it bluntly, won't ever do because they have too much to lose; TPTB know people are scared because people are dumb, panicky animals and that is ripe material to rob, rape and pillage.

You can't rob, rape and pillage radioactive ash.

Those who have everything they want at a whim are more afraid of losing it than those who have to scrimp, save, recycle, reuse and fight for it. I don't know why, it's just the way I see it. Probably some primal thing which says "You can't take it with you - you leave this world as you entered it, cold and naked." Or maybe I've just accepted the inevitability of corporeal mortality.

Those who have everything they want at a whim are more afraid of losing it than those who have to scrimp, save, recycle, reuse and fight for it. I don't know why, it's just the way I see it. Probably some primal thing which says "You can't take it with you - you leave this world as you entered it, cold and naked." Or maybe I've just accepted the inevitability of corporeal mortality.

To borrow from Yoda: "Learn to free yourself of those things you are most afraid to lose."

He was talking about exactly this. Material possessions are a crutch. You can't have exclusivity on ideas (no matter what patent laws are passed), which are infinitely more valuable to the whole of Humankind than a barrel of crude or a hole in the ground. If something helps you to live life more comfortably or is useful as a tool for doing something else, that's all it is - a tool. It's not worth dying for, or killing for, you can always get another. Or make another. To completely rely on something for what you consider survival (aside from bread and water), is to become a slave to it.

Me? I'm a slave to my pocketknife. Easily the most useful and beloved of any item in my possession. Everything else is just gravy. But you know what? If I lose it, I can get another. It's still just a tool, if I lose it I can get another.

Inner peace comes from... aw, who am I kidding, have you seen my posting history?

I didn't say I have nothing left to lose, I said that's what true freedom is. And people who feel like they have nothing left to lose are effectively free. They can make decisions without the impediment of obligations to be met or possessions to be protected.

...the idea of disappearing into a cloud of vapour at any time doesn't scare me anymore. I grew up with dive-under-the-desk drills, "Protect And Survive" [atomica.co.uk], "Threads" [imdb.com] (which terrified me the first time I watched it) and "When The Wind Blows" [imdb.com] (which made me cry).

You also need to watch On the beach [imdb.com] (the original) to round out your nuclear holocaust movies. It took me 30 years to actually sit down and watch it - partly because it was filmed where I grew up.

Folks who are afraid of losing their money are just insecure about their ability to create it again.

Sounds like a valid concern to me. So we have two people, one who apparently is aware of her limitations and legitimately concerned about keeping what is hers, especially since she knows that if she loses her wealth, it isn't coming back.

And a fool who advocates a destructive ideology rationalizing that he can "still make it" (oh, look, "self-attribution fallacy" on full display!) no matter how destructive that ideology gets.

Given the nature of the work and it's importance to National Security (I won't argue that point) the work of the individuals at LANL should be supervised and standards maintained; no question about it. I do agree that congress and previous administrations have over-reacted to situations but then again, we're talking about the stewardship of the nuclear arsenal here. Also, when have we never seen congress over-react to an even perceived problem where national security is concerned. The people who work at LANL have to be creative in what they do because since the Test Ban treaties they're work focuses on more theoretical simulations than actually getting to set off a nuke, and creativity and discipline don't necessarily go hand in hand, that also has to be realized. Leslie Groves had the same problems when they were building LANL and the first atomic weapons and he constantly was frustrated with the scientists because of the cultural differences between the military and academia. Despite all of this and under the tightest security all it took was a few sympathetic individuals to let the secrets out that gave the Soviets a huge leap in their project.

I think what has to happen with places like Livermore and LANL is that congress and the administration have to work to maintain the secrecy necessary to protect the stockpile but also let the people flourish within the confines of the work being done. Those individuals realize the importance of the work and do their best day in and day out to do that job well, so it's not wholly necessary to put clamps on them that create barriers to their well being and satisfaction with their work.

One wonders if Richard Feynman could work there now if he were still alive, given his hobby of safecracking and lockpicking to leave prank notes. But hey, it's not like they were doing anything important, right?

Speaking as the author/creator/owner/maintainer of the original LANL, The Real Story blog, http://parrot-farm.net/lanl-the-real-story/ [parrot-farm.net] [parrot-farm.net], and as a person who spent 20 years on staff at LANL, I can tell you that Hugh Gusterson's paper, if anything, understates the levels of incompetence, arrogance, and these days under its new corporate ownership, the *greed* demonstrated by the management of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The place had become nearly completely dysfunctional during the Nanos period, and is now simply treading water. The primary goal and business plan these days is to ensure that the annual award fee is received in it's entirety. Science has taken a back seat to making money for the LLC that now owns the contract for running the place.

While Lee was clearly a victim of racial profiling and media-enabled hysteria about Chinese espionage, this is not to say that he had done nothing wrong. He had, in fact, removed from the lab computer copies of top-secret nuclear weapons simulation codes, a serious offense for which he surely deserved to lose his clearance and his job. There is no evidence, however, that he ever gave the codes to a foreign country or that others at the lab had engaged in similar misdeeds. Indeed, many of Lee’s colleagues were horrified to hear of what he had done. When asked whether other scientists illicitly copied or took home secret documents, one Los Alamos weapons designer told me, “What Wen Ho did was like driving 80 miles per hour in a school zone.”

Los Alamos National Laboratory is far more likely to actually be working with classified documents that if released or stolen would prove to be terribly harmful to the US than, say, what happened to the State Department recently. What Wen Ho did was not like "driving 80 miles per hour in a school zone," rather it was like driving 100mph through a residential neighborhood while dozens of kids were walking across the street as their bus was unloading. It's so reckless and irresponsible that "even if he didn't kill someone," it shows an unacceptable lack of concern for the safety of others and his community.

I know many slashdotters like to chuckle about overclassification, but consider where he was working. Is it really wrong for the federal government to put its boot firmly up the ass of a scientist who works at one of our two nuclear weapons laboratories when he thinks basic procedures are beneath him?

What happened to Wen Ho Lee was the DOE director Richardson, a cabinet level Hispanic, former UN ambassador, former congressman, was widely expected to the the vice presidential running mate. This happened on his watch and the republicans were determined to destroy him for something that was not even his fault (the infractions occured before his time in office). He in turn massively over reacted. The FBI went nuts. Wen Ho Lee was put in solitary confinement and only allowed to have one book at a time. I've no doubt Wen Ho deserved jail time, but even the judge who let him out said he had be abused by the process. But the over reaction continued to play out politically and the lab was the loser.

To give people an idea of just how sensitive this type of data is, this is basically what is already known publicly about making a lightweight fusion-boosted warhead that can be put on a rocket:

The ideal fissile material is Plutonium-239. It should contain less than 10% Pu-240 and ideally less than 2% Pu-240This can be made in research reactors, using technology available in public literature.The amount used in a simple implosion bomb is 4-6kgIt can be extracted from spent nuclear fuel by a solvent extraction process using the PUREX process ( which is again described in open litterature )A 2-point explosion system can be made by using an air-gap lens. Detailed analysis of how such a lens could be shaped is available in open litterature.Boosting the device is best done with an equal mixture of pressurized Deuterium and Tritium. About 5 grams total is needed.Deuterium is readily available on the open market, and Tritium can be produced from lithium in a research reactor.The plutonium can be stabilized in its delta phase by addition of about 3% gallium.To prevent oxidation the plutonium can be gold plated.

Now, however:Optimal yield is achieved when the deuterium-tritium reaction burns close to completion while the fissile material is still in a dense configuration. This means the fission chain reaction ought to start early enough to heat the hydrogen isotopes to ignition temperature quickly, but not too early as that may result in inefficient compression. The exact timing of the initiating neutron pulse is therefore very important, and depends on the precise characteristics of the bomb. Determining the optimal timing is believed very difficult without nuclear testing.

If the information he copied detailed the dimensions, composition and timing of the fission primary, then such information leaking to the public would essentially allow anybody that acquired weapons grade plutonium and tritium to create a highly compact nuclear warhead, small enough to fit on a rocket or easily hidden in a small space. The very first device to make use of this technology had a weight of about 40 pounds, and a yield similar to that of the Hiroshima bomb.

If the information he copied detailed the dimensions, composition and timing of the fission primary, then such information leaking to the public would essentially allow anybody that acquired weapons grade plutonium and tritium to create a highly compact nuclear warhead, small enough to fit on a rocket or easily hidden in a small space.

Indeed. What few people seem to realize is that while the principles of nuclear weapons are simple indeed... the actual engineering is anything but.The real problem i

the fact is that you can build a nuclear bomb with 1940s technology. know what else was state of the art in the 1940s? nylon. tube amplifiers. black and white television. color movies.

the 'gun type weapon' is so simple a child could build it. half the shit on mythbusters is more complicated than a gun-type uranium weapon. refining the uranium is a pain in the ass, but again, it just takes a lot of fucking money, there isn't any secret formula. there is no mystery. its not going back in the bottle. its like

Work on them at home? Not every security breach is a deliberate attack by whatever foreign power is closest to the perpetrator's ethnicity. Ignorance, arrogance and laziness are far more powerful and widespread forces of destruction.

On December 10, 1999, Lee was arrested. Described as an extreme danger to US national security, he was held in solitary confinement for 278 days awaiting his day in court. When he was finally brought to trial, the case against him rapidly fell apart; 58 of the 59 counts against him were dropped, and he was released with time served for one count of mishandling classified information.

The case did not "fall apart" when it went to trial, because it never went to trial. I'm also struggling to comprehend how the case could have "fallen apart", because they found classified information in his house and his unclassified computer, and what other evidence do you need for charges of mishandling classified information? (note: the case did "fall apart", in that he should have been charged with much more but wasn't, but the 59 charges were legit)

Here's how espionage cases against people with clearances are always handled : you are charged with whatever crime you are guilty of, then are offered a plea deal for a lesser offense in exchange for two things. First, you must honestly relate everything you leaked, so the damage to national security can be assessed, and then you must promise a newly discovered silence about matters classified. For obvious reasons the vast majority (I can't think of any who haven't in recent history) of the accused take the plea deal and never go to court.

Except for Wen Ho Lee. He refused to plea down to a lesser charge (in this case a single charge), as most of these people do. So they stuck him in solitary, because without agreeing to #2 he was still a threat to national security. Finally, after 278 days he relented and accepted the plea deal. He got off lucky, because the FBI botched the investigation and he could have been prosecuted for a good bit more -- export violations for one, for discussing nuclear information with Chinese scientists.

The arrogance charge is right on the money. The relaxed attitude toward the law from people at the lab is astounding. The mere fact that Wen Ho Lee has become something of a martyr is proof.

"I'm also struggling to comprehend how the case could have "fallen apart", because they found classified information in his house and his unclassified computer" - (A) The material they found was classified as 'restricted', not 'secret'. Having worked in multiple government laborities, I can tell you that restricted in this sense means confidential but not classified (in the same sense that social security numbers and other personal information are not to be made public) (B) Another LANL physicist, John Ric

"Restricted Data is always classified. RD is a category of classified information, and can be of any classification level" - Are you just making this up? "Restricted" (a classification level no longer used) was equivalent to ''Sensitive but Unclassified' or 'For Official Use Only' - it does not require a separate hardened computer system, nor cryptographically secure storage.

I have to question which government labs you've worked at, because they don't all deal in classified information. - I worked at the Ar

"Restricted Data is always classified. RD is a category of classified information, and can be of any classification level" - Are you just making this up? "Restricted" (a classification level no longer used) was equivalent to ''Sensitive but Unclassified' or 'For Official Use Only' - it does not require a separate hardened computer system, nor cryptographically secure storage.

To suggest that the 'poor scientists at Los Alamos' have a difficult time being messed-with by the politicians is a touch disingenuous unless one mentions that the facilities have had a spate of data losses, espionage, and a number of other problems that have given the political class a REASON to stick their noses in.

And while we're at it, I'm going to guess that this exact same cri di couer could have been issued by scientists in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s

I just read the entire paper. Before reading it I was neutral and largely ignorant of Los Alamos' problems and culture. After reading it I tend to believe that the culture there is indeed one of arrogance and privilege and that the author, Gusterson, is their mouthpiece.

The paper is not even close to a scientific treatment. It is a series of conclusions, allegations, and characterizations more suited to a letter to the editor (or a Slashdot rant like this one) than a NSF funded study report. He never once describes the scientific culture that is the subject, nor does he analyze it. Nor does he analyze the management. He simply hurls characterizations and insults at it. The paper reads like a list of grievances brought forward by a shop steward.

To use Gusterson's words against him. He says, "Recent condenmations of Los Alamos have been based on remarkably thin cartoonish descriptions of its culture." But his paper does exactly that, it seems to be based on remarkably thin cartoonish descriptions of the management.

I'm still ignorant of the actual culture at Los Alamos. However, if there was a calcified culture of arrogance and privilege, and that culture sent forth someone to present their views, I would expect it to sound exactly like Gustafson's paper. If that paper were the only evidence, I would say "Fire them all."

"He never once describes the scientific culture that is the subject" - actually, he does, by saying several times that such a separate culture does not exist: "Pete Nanos ran his lab into the ground by insisting on the existence of a distinctive culture that was largely an artifact of his own imagination... Second, the organizational dysfunction at Los Alamos has been misdiagnosed as a problem of culture; it is more likely a problem of structure."

Speaking as the author/creator/owner/maintainer of the original LANL, The Real Story blog, http://parrot-farm.net/lanl-the-real-story/ [parrot-farm.net] [parrot-farm.net], and as a person who spent 20 years on staff at LANL, I can tell you that Hugh Gusterson's paper, if anything, understates the levels of incompetence, arrogance, and these days under its new corporate ownership, the *greed* demonstrated by the management of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The place had become nearly completely dysfunctional during the Nanos period, and is now simply treading water. The primary goal and business plan these days is to ensure that the annual award fee is received in it's entirety. Science has taken a back seat to making money for the LLC that now owns the contract for running the place.

Ironic, isn't it? It wasn't too long ago that it was the left that was the greatest political threat to Los Alamos and LLNL.

But today, as the article points out, it is the right, mostly starting with the Bush Administration. I'm no fan of people scapegoating George W. Bush for all of the ills of the nation, but here is a case where his administration had a profoundly negative effect upon national security. The same kind of paranoid mismanagement on a gross scale that gives you TSA cavity searches every time you get on a plane is gutting the intellectual and scientific capabilities of these institutions.

It is a further irony that we criticize fundamentalist Muslim nations for impeding the progress of science and technology, but we are allowing this to happen in our own backyard. We owe much of our technology today-- the internet, integrated circuits, a national highway system, GPS, etc to nuclear defense research and spending.

We are told we cannot compete with developing nations for manufacturing, and must do so through science and innovation. But when scientific research and scientists are undermined, then what future do we have?

The failed policies of the Bush administration and Bechtel's seizure of power must be reversed. Nuclear science should be returned to the capable hands of nuclear scientists, not a for-profit corporation that has proven hostile to science and scientists all in the name of short-term profit. Bechtel has acted against the national security interests of the US and is not fit to hold a government contract. The truth is that government-funded science does produce tremendously useful results, and nowhere has that been more apparent than in nuclear defense research. We cannot afford to lose that.

Speaking as the author/creator/owner/maintainer of the original LANL, The Real Story blog, http://parrot-farm.net/lanl-the-real-story/ [parrot-farm.net], and as a person who spent 20 years on staff at LANL, I can tell you that Hugh Gusterson's paper, if anything, understates the levels of incompetence, arrogance, and these days under its new corporate ownership, the *greed* demonstrated by the management of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The place had become nearly completely dysfunctional during the Nanos period, and is n

And we could just come in a take if things got really bad. The middle eastern oil producers could threaten embargo's like they did back in the 70's but doing something like today is just like sending out engraved invitations for a visit from the US military. Canada is not overwhelmingly dependent on their oil exports. They did just fine before the oil sands were tapped but the middle east and countries like Venezuela are almost 100% dependent on their oil revenues. They couldn't afford the lose of the US ma

The US is actually on a trajectory for fossil fuel independence thanks largely to fracking, horizontal drilling and improved seismic analysis tools. The U.S. is already producing so much natural gas its becoming a net exporter.

A Goldman Sachs estimate has the U.S. becoming the world's #1 producer by 2017. If the U.S. reduces consumption with things like improved fuel efficiency it could eventually break even, something Presidents have promised but failed to deliver since the 70's

North Dakota's fields are putting out so much oil they are having pipeline capacity problems. Production from Texas and California's ancient oil fields is also booming. Drillers passed over rich, shallow deposits in Santa Barbara fields because it was hard to tap. With current technology its producing windfalls. California just sacked the commissioner that was blocking new drilling permits so its probably going to throw open the doors to new production.

The US is potentially on a trajectory for being temporarily able to be independent of natural gas imports for a couple of decades. There is little to suggest that we will be able to produce enough oil to eliminate imports. We can decrease oil use by some conversion of oil to natural gas but the two energy sources are not equivalent.

It's possible that there is significant oil in the Arctic, but it is by no means assured. And the US doesn't 'own' much of the Arctic floor. The Gulf of Mexico may have some

Now that's a bad case of misrepresenting history: the Germans capitulated before any nuclear bomb was ready for use. They were defeated by conventional means. The bombs, although intended for Germany, were therefore ultimately used in Japan. The war in Europe was not in any way influenced by the development of the bomb.

And let's recall just exactly why they were used in the Japan. During WWII, the Japanese rarely surrendered. During one of the last islands to be taken, Saipan, the Japanese had about 31,000 troops on the island. Of that, 24,000 were killed, 5000 committed suicide, and 921 surrendered. There were 22,000 civilians killed and most of those were suicides. That's just one island when it was already clear Japan had lost the war. On the home islands, the Japanese were training school children to attack Americans

So you think a country led by a total psychopath that used it's very formidable scientific, engineering, and manufacturing capabilities to build the most efficient killing factories in history would not have dropped a nuke if they had one?

Germany was working on creating nuclear weapons, though between sabotage by the British SOE and the Norwegian resistance and their own stupid decisions, they were nowhere near producing one when Berlin was captured.

The best-case estimate was 1.4 million American casualties, worst-case was about 4 million, in an operation that they expected would take until 1948-1949. These estimates were given by a command that did not know the bomb existed, so they were calling it how they saw it in an operation that they were gearing up to. This did not mention the undoubtedly horrific Japanese casualties that would have resulted, and the moralizing over the bomb ignores the fact that the USAF would have *levelled* all the Japanese

Still arguably saved thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lives to use them. The Japanese Government was quite clear that if they had to they to defend the homeland with old people and children wielding sticks on the beaches they would. The Army and Marines believed them. The solution was to use the atomic weapons and hopefully trick the Japanese into thinking we could utterly annihilate the Island without risking our troops. We in fact couldn't, we used our only two bombs on the demonstration and

The question of terms of surrender is somewhat important to the discussion. The Japanese would have accepted surrender on their own terms, and indeed their terms were not that onerous (though they were never actually terms of surrender, they did wind up getting most of what they wanted). The problem is that no one thought the American people (or the British people for that matter, they helped us quite a bit in the Pacific) would accept anything less than unconditional surrender. It's hard to understand t

Perhaps we should ask Pakistan, China, and North Korea. And Iran. And India. Who else? Rogue Soviet sympathisers?

You could argue that maybe those nations wouldn't be so trigger-happy to get a nuke if they weren't constantly being threatened by the other guys who already have nukes. But yeah, genie, bottle, cat, bag, all that stuff. It would be nice if we could get a global agreement to settle all conflicts by a good Unreal Tournament Deathmatch, but it's not going to happen.

The US currently has enough warheads to destroy the world several hundred times over. It could easily be argued that this is a little excessive unless aliens invade that can survive 100 nuclear obliterations of the earth and still pose a threat to what's left of the US by then (hint: which would be ash and dust and a few scraps of metal).

There may be a need to hold some weapons as deterrent - nobody really argues that once they have the capability - but do you *really* need the ability to kill everyone on the planet, yourself included, several hundred times over? Hell, even just knocking it down to "twice over" is more than enough security and needs a nuclear budget only 1/50th of what it is now.

Even the UK has the power to obliterate the planet if it really came to it, and we only have something like 5% of the US arsenal still active.

Plus, a single nuclear detonation as an act of war will pretty much end the planet. That's *why* the US/UK still have nuclear weapons - to say "Try it, even against only one country in a small way, and we'll just take everyone out." - which puts the fear of Armageddon into any idiot that things their Northern/Southern neighbours don't respect them enough. There's only been two quite small nuclear bombs dropped as an act of aggression in the entire history of the planet - both on Japan - which ended WW2 almost instantaneously. The next one pretty much *starts* and*ends* WW3.

Nobody with a brain is saying "get rid of all nuclear weapons". They're saying "Why the hell do you need *THAT* many when just one might end the world and just 2% of your stockpile will guarantee the end of the world on its own?", especially when your taxes are PAYING for those things to be guarded in case someone rogue *does* steal them. The more of them that exist, the more chances of accidents, terrorism, thefts, rogue agents, etc. being successful. Scrap most of them safely and get on with life with the same assurance that you can eliminate all life that you had before.

The US currently has enough warheads to destroy the world several hundred times over.

[citation needed]. Seriously, I've never seen a quote as high as 10 for US and former Soviet Russia. Your "several hundred times over" number for the US alone smells like ass (which implies you pulled it from yours).

The US currently has enough warheads to destroy the world several hundred times over.

Quit with the massively overblown hyperbole. If what you were saying was true, and about 2000 warheads was enough to "destroy the world several hundred times over", the would would have been dead and gone a long time ago. Hiroshima would have taken out China and Siberia, too, and Trinity would have wiped out the US. Obviously, that didn't happen.

Nuclear weapons aren't magic "drop one and you wipe out and sterilize everything within a thousand miles" bombs. Yes, they're powerful--more so than people realize, in some ways--but in other ways, they aren't nearly as powerful as common "wisdom" would suggest.

Honestly, 2000 warheads is barely enough for a credible deterrent at all. Yes, the goal of a deterrent is to convince the other guy that you can bomb him back to the middle ages if he does something you don't like, but that takes a lot more than sprinkling five or six devices across the country and calling it done. A credible deterrent plan targets not population, but industrialization, transportation, and military facilities; you want to take out everything that makes it possible for him to fight a war or live in anything close to modern comfort. That takes a lot more than a handful of devices. Something like a railyard or airfield is probably going to take a few successful hits to truly render it unusable.

And then, of course, you can't just sit with the number you came up with there. Next, you have to consider redundancy; a good number of your warheads will fail to initiate, get shot down, or have a delivery failure (the rocket blows up, bomber aborts or is shot down, submarine doesn't get the message or is sunk, etc). And after that, you have to plan for maintenance; a very rough estimate is that a third of your stockpile will be out of service at any given time for maintenance (subs have to go into port for refits; bombers, missiles, and warheads themselves need maintenance and overhauls, etc.).

Remember, the goal isn't to try to be scary. Rather, the goal is to have enough to convince the other guy that he absolutely cannot win under any circumstance, so he shouldn't even think about it. We had that in the past. We might still have it. But we might not. And as long as politicians keep making cuts not based on what makes strategic sense, or with a coherent goal and policy in mind, but rather just trying to score political points by cutting back to some arbitrary number they pulled out of their ass, we make the risk of that happening greater.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs are tiny compared to the sort of nuclear weapons in US/UK arsenals. Variable yeild thermonuclear weapons have a standard Uranium/Plutonium core around which they have tanks to pump deutrium and tritrium in to the required yeild just before launch, depending how much tthey pump in we are talking hundreds of times the yeilds of the core alone, which itself is bigger than the the ones used against Japan in WWII.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs are tiny compared to the sort of nuclear weapons in US/UK arsenals.

Most of the bombs in global arsenals are roughly 100-500 kilotons. That's roughly 5 to 25 times as great as the Nagasaki bomb. It's larger, but not that much larger. Keep in mind that there aren't that many hardened targets which would require megaton range bombs.

As I understand it, the strategists figured out that more accurate deliver of nukes was more important than raw size of the nukes.

Yes, the goal of a deterrent is to convince the other guy that you can bomb him back to the middle ages

Which is why they would be useless in Afganistan. Another reason is with the size of some of the mountains there you would need one nuke per valley and without very good up to the minute intelligence it's a very expensive way to BBQ goats. There's many other reasons.

...that takes a lot more than sprinkling five or six devices across the country and calling it done.

You're assuming that infrastructure must be destroyed by direct blast effects. It would be a lot simpler, take fewer warheads, and cause less fallout to pop a few airbursts and take out all of the enemy's infrastructure by EMP [wikipedia.org]. A single very large detonation 300 miles over Kansas [wikipedia.org] would affect the whole continental US as well as wail on any satellites within line-of-sight of the detonation.

You're assuming that infrastructure must be destroyed by direct blast effects.

That's a fair assumption to make. Keep in mind that burned out electronics can be replaced. And while it is apparently difficult to shield electronics (and probably near impossible to shield region-scale electric systems like power delivery systems) from an EMP, it can be done.

In the example you gave, the US military would probably not be very effected by the EMP, particularly, it's nuclear systems. That means retaliatory strike for any identifiable country or region. There are still some parties that wo

When a simple hurricane damages a single large transformer that takes a month to replace and keeps thousands out of power, imagine all of the large transformers on just the eastern seaboard getting fried at the same time. Chaos. Utter chaos. The national guard and the military would have their hands full with domestic duties, and they'd be just as affected as the rest of us.

It's not only the electronics, but the whole electrical grid that's at risk.

Remember, the goal isn't to try to be scary. Rather, the goal is to have enough to convince the other guy that he absolutely cannot win under any circumstance, so he shouldn't even think about it. We had that in the past.

You mean like during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Kennedy and Khrushchev both believed that they were going to destroy civilization, and yet they were both on the brink of pushing the button anyway.

Quit with the massively overblown hyperbole. If what you were saying was true, and about 2000 warheads was enough to "destroy the world several hundred times over", the would would have been dead and gone a long time ago. [...]Honestly, 2000 warheads is barely enough for a credible deterrent at all.

Well, you're partly right and partly wrong. You're right that the GP poster was using inaccurate and hyperbolic language. However, you're wrong that 2000 warheads is a minimal credible deterrent. For a nation-state such as, say, Iran, that is contemplating a nuclear first strike against the US, four submarine-based

Actually, by my rough napkin math that 'destroy the world several hundred times over' thing is just a popular myth/urban legend.

I suspect that even if ALL of the nuclear weapons in existence were detonated we wouldn't destroy the planet (or even all life on the planet).MAYBE we could wipe out humanity. Certainly we could take out most major cities (and we probably don't need this capability to still ensure MAD protection).But I suspect people think your average nuclear bomb does far more damage and is far m

Yeah, it's not the nuke itself, that'll take out a small city and spread radiation a little beyond that, it's that if we detonate that many at once we'll spit out enough dust and ash to blot out the sun for several months, tree's start to die and the land turns to desert, then livestock and vegetarians have no food, after they starve the rest of us go the same way.

It's not the actual detonation that does it in. Detonation of around 100 modern warheads (approx 400-500 kiloton, airburst) within a short period (not spread out over decades like the testing weapons) would put enough debris into the upper atmosphere to trigger a nuclear winter that would last about 20 years. Long enough to wipe out most of the worlds populations of large mammals including humans. See it's not the Bombs that kill everyone, it's the starvation afterwards.

It's not the actual detonation that does it in. Detonation of around 100 modern warheads (approx 400-500 kiloton, airburst) within a short period (not spread out over decades like the testing weapons) would put enough debris into the upper atmosphere to trigger a nuclear winter that would last about 20 years. Long enough to wipe out most of the worlds populations of large mammals including humans. See it's not the Bombs that kill everyone, it's the starvation afterwards.

In this modern era people forget just how easy it is to starve to death. The US could survive one year of total crop failure with only minor starvation but you push it to 2 or 20 and we're in cannibalism time. After that first year when starvation sets in everyone's going to go bat shit crazy and start killing each other.

The volcano or comet impact ca. 535 was likely larger than that and the effects only lasted 3 years. The even larger Toba supervolcano caused climate effects lasting at least 20 years, but early humans survived even then. That released 800 cubic km of ash and 6 billion tons of sulphur dioxide, far more than a few thousand nukes would kick up. Certainly with the loss of all infrastructure more than half of humanity would likely die due to lack of resources, but its unlikely to kill off everyone.

That super-volcano also killed all but about 2000 humans and drastically reduced human genetic diversity. There is no question (to me at least) humans would probably survive in some small geographic corner of the world that was least effected by the disaster. But again, it's not the bombs that's going to do most of the killing, it's the killing that will start when people start to starve to death that will do in most of the worlds population.

Aye. According to Wolfram Alpha, a 1 megaton bomb will have a 4.5 mile air blast radius, which comes out to ~64 square miles... Divide the earth's total land area by that and you come up with needing ~900,000 bombs to literally destroy everything.

> The US currently has enough warheads to destroy the world several hundred times over> which would be ash and dust and a few scraps of metal

Hmmm, let's use math instead of guesses.

The area of "complete distraction" effect of a modern warhead is about 3 miles radius. The area of the Great Britain is about 90,000 square miles, so that means we would need 30,000 nuclear warheads to destroy the UK to the level you're talking about. For the US you would need over 1 million warheads.

The total megatonnage of the deployed nuclear arsenal is about 1,430 Mt (but this is influenced by the choice of deployed weapons for bombers); for the entire active arsenal it is 2,330 Mt. The all-time high point in explosive yield was in 1960 when the U.S. held 20,491 Mt in its stockpile.

So the U.S. arsenal has already been slashed by about 89%, in terms of megatons, from its Cold War peak.

That is because they are replacing single huge bombs by composite smaller ones, that are able to destroy the same area, but cost way less to build and maintain. Ok, there is also some dismantling, but total power is not a usefull metric at all.

Composite bombs avoid problems with the destruction radius being just proportional to the square root of the power.

face it, this stone's been turned, and it can't be turned back. even if we abandon nuclear weapons today, the knowledge exists to make them again (as it should - to ignore all of nuclear physics would be a bad idea).

in this game, anyone who can wipe out millions of people at the touch of a button is going to hold some sway. so these weapons are desirable, and always will be, even if the rest of the world is playing along.

and not to sound far-right, but i think a nominal deterrent is needed as well. the USA's policy of consolidating, simplifying and idiot-proofing it's arsenal is not a bad one. not so much having the stockpile, but having the ability to churn out cheap, simple, reliable nukes at a moment's notice is useful, as well as a small number of "active" nukes just in case anyone gets any ideas.

of course, if everyone had nukes, the world would be less safe. but they say that about handguns, too.*trollface.png*

> face it, this stone's been turned, and it can't be turned back. even if we abandon nuclear weapons today,> the knowledge exists to make them again (as it should - to ignore all of nuclear physics would be a bad idea).

The same is true for crossbows, but I don't see anyone rushing to equip armies with them. And before you say it's not the same thing, you need to go and examine the history of the crossbow, because it absolutely was the atomic bomb of its era. So basically I think this is a terrible argument.

The Bomb is an outdated weapon. The same is true of MBT's, heavy SP artillery and many other weapon systems. We're already at the point where a weapon that can't be carried on a Twin Huey is a useless weapon - so the M777 and Hummer-based drones are much, much more valuable than the Crusader and Abrams. And as that evolution continues, I suspect the war of the future is going to look more like stuxnet and less like The Bulge, and that evolution will continue. It will continue to be bloody, ever more so, but the way that damage will be delivered with be with precision, not area effects. The Bomb is the ultimate area effect weapon.

And that's assuming the war that the US next fights won't be on the balance sheet rather than in the skies. I believe all evidence suggests this is the real threat and that spending time and effort worrying about the atomic maginot line weakens the US's attempts to move into the future.

There is the question of how many weapons are needed, and also the conversation about demasting them. It seems entirely reasonable to me that 50 strategic warheads kept in secure off-site storage (as opposed to mounted in missiles) is just as much a deterrent as 10000 warheads ready for 10 minute launch. And not just today, in the 1960s as well.

Removing them from the missile would be a clear message to the world that the US does not consider other people a threat to their existence (which is the case) as well as provide another level of escalation (or sabre rattling if you prefer) that doesn't exist now.

Your an idiot. Hummers arent more useful than MBT's as hummers are getting wiped out by IED's

artillery, MBT's etc are what is used to wipe out critical infrastructure. Piloted planes some and drones even lesscan only target some things and those not very reliably. A simple look at the numbers of civilians killed by drone strikes should tell you that planes arent always the best idea.

Intelligent people want their armed forces mobile, with numbers of and various sizes ofweapons. An m-16 cant knock down a

I would also point out that the British had a lot of success against the French sticking to the longbow which they had been using for years before the crossbow came along. Yes the cross bow had more range and did more damage per a shot, but in the time it takes to reload the long bow men could have run the distance and the next reload they would have got several shots off. Also the shortbow (basically shortened version of the longbow could be used from horseback).

I would also point out that the British had a lot of success against the French sticking to the longbow which they had been using for years before the crossbow came along. Yes the cross bow had more range and did more damage per a shot, but in the time it takes to reload the long bow men could have run the distance and the next reload they would have got several shots off. Also the shortbow (basically shortened version of the longbow could be used from horseback).

The longbow is also much harder to learn. The reason us english used them well was something to do with the amount of legal encouragement we were given to use them. This apparently included crazy laws preventing us from doing anything else at certain times (on sundays or holidays) and making sure all practice ranges were over 220 yards long.

Also, your impression that longbow men moved is not accurate. The best plan was for the longbowman to sharpen a very big stick and plunge it into the ground next to him at 45 degrees. He then sharpened the other end too then stood just behind it. The stick had to be sturdy enough such that a horse charging it could not break it and close enough to the stick next to it that a horse could not get through the gap. He then just sat there and made arrows until the battle commenced and some fool walked in range.

Also, longbowman were not exactly useless when it came to close combat as the hammer they used for driving stakes into the ground was nasty if you clobbered someone with it. They also had a useful little short handled axe for making arrows. They were also unarmoured since they had no need for it so much more manoeuvrable than anyone who had survived walking through their hail of arrows.

"The same is true for crossbows" Did you really just say that? Really? Intentionally? Actually thinking you had an argument or a point? Crossbows at the time were the same thing and they were used until such a time as they were replaced by a more powerful, more deadly deterrent force. Guns are the replacement to the cross bow and they are the standard arms of every army in the world now. Your argument proves the point you are arguing against.

The same is true for crossbows, but I don't see anyone rushing to equip armies with them. And before you say it's not the same thing, you need to go and examine the history of the crossbow, because it absolutely was the atomic bomb of its era. So basically I think this is a terrible argument.

The rifle does everything a crossbow can. Their both easy to use weapons that can punch through armor (personal armor, not armor armor). And the rifle does it better - a higher fire rate, less bulk, etc, etc.

The same is true for crossbows, but I don't see anyone rushing to equip armies with them. And before you say it's not the same thing, you need to go and examine the history of the crossbow, because it absolutely was the atomic bomb of its era.

Nothing has ever been the atomic bomb of its era, except for the atomic bomb. The ability to destroy civilizations within the hour is not comparable to any historical weapon system.

Removing them from the missile would be a clear message to the world that the US does not consider other people a threat to their existence (which is the case) as well as provide another level of escalation (or sabre rattling if you prefer) that doesn't exist now.

The problem with this assertion is that there are other countries who can be a threat to the existence of the US. Keeping a few thousand weapons at the ready is merely recognition of this fact.